


Expectations of Love

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, M/M, also the ships are not completely clear but basically han is lowkey in love with everyone, but their relationship is a main point of the fic, everything from rogue one happened, han and lando is past, han and leia is present, han and luke is debatable and probably happening, post return of the jedi with mentions of events from rogue one, probably not canon compliant, so baze and chirrut are in this but it's mentions about them, tagging this drabble is very confusing, which is why i didn't put them in the characters or put them in as a ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 19:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12416391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Set predominately after Return of the Jedi (with hints about situations that take place prior to The Force Awakens), Han, Luke, Leia, and Lando discuss the decision to pay tribute to the heroes of Rogue One by naming constellations after them. Han continues to not really understand people.





	Expectations of Love

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by Nan's lovely [artwork](http://naniiebimworks.tumblr.com/post/165737939148/the-guard-and-the-guardian-rogue-one).

Of their group, only Luke, and Lando, who shoots Han a steely, all-knowing gaze and says without any of the normal velvet in his voice, “They were lovers,” seem to understand why when the constellations are suggested, the ones for Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus are inextricably woven together. The constellations are a way to honor the fallen members of Rogue One who are now nothing more than bits of dust scattered throughout space, which Han thinks is the best way to go all things considered but then he loves it, the vast stretches of nothing, the way he can escape into the void surrounded by planets and stars and emptiness all around him, nothing to live up to, no one to fail, constantly running but seldom being caught–though he is caught now, wrapped into love and friendship and it sticks at him like thousands of needles across his skin, not entirely unpleasant but mystifying and strange, uncomfortable if he leans a certain way, the same way that getting close to some star systems always felt uncomfortable, an odd pricking in his mind, a get out sort of sensation. 

Han Solo does not believe in the kriffing Force. Not now. Not ever. But sometimes Luke looks at him like he sees something, like he knows something. Especially when Han screams, “Never tell me the odds,” and flies through something no one should be able to fly through on a whim, on a dime, without any preparation at all. Sometimes when he and Leia are stretched out together on his bed, and his fingers are in her hair, which is constantly everywhere, and he is thinking about how much she means to him and how much he’s worried that he will screw this up in much the same way that he screws everything up because he is loud and tires of people and places and can never control his tongue or his sighing or his constant wish to be away from crowds, she will look at him in the same sort of way, and Han will feel exposed, his skin unzippered to reveal all the fleshy parts underneath, ropes of muscle and nerves, patches of fat, wet, white bone hidden away behind the rest of it. Leia is too shrewd for his well-being. Luke is too knowing. Han has been bested by twins who seem to be as opposite and yet as much the same as the two faces of a coin. And Lando will just look at him, that look that Lando has given him for years, almost forever, and click his tongue because Lando knows that Han is in his over his head. Lando knows that Han will mess up these relationships in much the same way that Han messed up theirs. It’s inevitable. It’s a shame. Han likes them. Han loves them. Of course, he loved Lando, too. With his bluster and charisma and a smirk brighter and truer than Han’s has ever managed to be. He learned the smirk from Lando, felt it slide onto his lips, engrave itself in the muscles of his face the first time the other man, when they were young, young, barely even men, grabbed him by his scruffy chin and kissed him.

“None of the records mention that,” he huffs, gaze skittering from Lando to Luke and then back to his feet, which are crossed and resting on the edge of the table despite the fact that everyone has been glaring at them since he put them there in the first place.

“You read the records,” Leia says, and even though her voice is flat Han can hear the slight wiggle of pride in it at the end. 

It makes him shift, uncomfortable because she should not get used to the idea of him coming through, not when what he does best is disappoint. Sometimes he wonders what she and Lando talked about in Cloud City after he was frozen, locked into the endless, screaming nightmare of his mind, and carted off to be a trophy in Jabba’s palace. Did Lando detail all the ways in which Han failed him? Did Lando tell her all the ways in which Han loved him? He can never decide which option is worse. “No, I,” he starts, growls, tugs a hand through his hair, and wishes he were working on the Falcon with Chewie. It’s where he belongs, in his ship, covered with grease, not here, among people, pretending that he gets it. He doesn’t get it. He never has. The only thing he really understands is flying the Falcon, weaving through impossible odds that he doesn’t know about, following the glittering river of the galaxy wherever it will take him. He trusts the void. It’s a thought he never gives voice to anymore because when he told Lando, once, after, when his arms were snaked around the other’s waist, the man looked up at him like he was something strange that should not exist at all and touched his face with such tenderness that Han was shaken for two straight weeks. “I just don’t get it,” he blurts out, voice suddenly cross because it always frustrates him to be brought back up against all the shit he can’t work out, and it happens all the time.

Luke, young face looking older than it should now, decades older than when Han first met him, and Han wishes there was something that could ease that off of him because, man, the kid deserves better than all this shit, the kid deserves peace, settles his chin on his hands. He has his elbows on the table, and Han is surprised that Lando hasn’t fussed at him about that. (Leia might be royal, but Lando is the one with all the manners. Prim and proper and so fucking elegant that Han used to think grace was something people had invented after seeing him walk.) “It’s not in the records,” Luke says simply. Luke never calls him out in the way that some other people will. Luke doesn’t point out how Han should recognize love considering the past and present relationships he has with the people sitting at the table currently. Luke doesn’t question why Han’s eyes and mind cannot put two and two together, cannot extrapolate the data.

Han shouldn’t even be here anyway. He doesn’t understand why he was invited. He’s not good at any of this. It just makes him twitchy and nervous, on edge and snappish. The best thing about Leia–there are many best things about Leia honestly–is that she can run as hot as he can. She understands mood swings, and while she might not completely get how his mind works, she understands what it’s like to try and grasp something that is out of reach. (Han never mentions to anyone the way he has walked in on her in empty rooms, her fingers extended, her face one of rapt concentration, like she is trying to get something to move but only ends up pushing at something as immovable as a mountain. Leia wants what Luke has, and Han has never been more upset that he cannot steal something in his life because he would bring it to her if he could.)

“Mothma mentioned it,” Luke says at the same time that Lando–the best reader of people in the universe–mutters about it being obvious to anyone with any sense at all, and Han feels two new pangs of guilt.

He should listen to Mothma, he really should, but the cadence of her voice reminds him of women who raised him, women who are gone now, and he always ends up tuning it out so as not to pick at wounds that never heal. Han is not a warrior. Han is not a fighter. He’s a scrapper, and a runner. When shit gets too heavy, he disappears. Life is heavy. The space between the stars, floating in his ship, looking out the windows and listening to Chewie sing is not heavy at all. Han squirms like a bug on display, out of his element, twitching. 

Leia is not the type to coddle or comfort, but Luke is, settles a hand on Han’s elbow like he knows that this pokes at all his weak points. “Mothma met them. She said it was apparent from that.”

Lando sighs in that way of his that means he doesn’t understand why other people are so slow. (If Han believed in the Force, he thinks Lando would probably be smeared with it, too, considering the way he just knows things, people. Lando knows people. As if he were born with a secret code in his head to unlock all of them while Han has no codes, not even one for himself.) Then he reaches across the desk to tap rapidly at the keypad and a holo shimmers to life in front of them, replacing the proposed constellations. “It’s just fucking apparent.” 

The rare curse-word and the venom behind it are enough to even get Leia’s attention, and she looks up, over, at Lando as Han has to look away from him because his dark eyes are fuming, smoldering in one of those passionate displays that have always made Han uncomfortable. Leia is here because they need a ring-leader, but this is not her assignment. There are much more important things to do, and she has been working through them on her datapad all the while, surfacing when needed, but not truly paying attention because this matters but it will not keep the stars spinning, it will not keep the road to progress moving. This is a courtesy, not a necessity. 

When Han finds the courage to look back up, Lando is fussing with the edge of his sky blue cape, a slight flush on his cheeks that means he’s embarrassed for letting Han irritate him in public again. Han recognizes the blush, used to kiss it in an effort to apologize but that only ever made Lando angrier. “Lan,” he starts, but the other man just clicks his tongue and points at the image. (Lan and Han was something that Han used to use long ago. Lando always hated it. Too cute. Too coupley. Too strange. Han liked it, it was as soft as Lando’s skin, as the lining of his finest clothes that he would brush his fingers over when undressing him.)

The image is grainy. The image is barely clear, but Han can make out the figures on it. He doesn’t know how anything at all, even data, survived Scarif, but when it started transmitting, it started transmitting. They didn’t just get the Death Star plans but thousands of images hurtling from the cameras dotting the planet, dotting the beach, a way to watch the lives of the heroes blink out, one by one. The larger of the men, Baze Malbus who looks like a bear, a tank, a wall in most of their footage, apart and aloof, is cradling the other man, the spinning top, the lightning, Chirrut Imwe. He is cradling him in his arms, and the fucking pain is so evident on his face that Han has to look away because emotion has always made his palms itch. 

Han is looking at his feet, and he can feel Leia and Lando’s eyes on him. Luke is probably still regarding the image, thinking about something that Han cannot even guess at because who can ever tell what goes through the mind of a Jedi anyway. Not that Han believes in the kriffing Force.

“You haven’t looked at any of these have you?” Leia’s voice is a calm line, the sort that helps Han focus. Lando was always fifteen hundred variations on one tone, and Han got lost trying to map five of them. Leia has tones, switches, but hers are easier. They align closer to his own. He understands them. He is not always confused when trying to read her.

“No. It wasn’t my damn business.” Han gets defensive when he’s emotionally overwrought. Everyone at this table understands that.

“What do you see?” Lando has made his own voice calm, which Han appreciates, though he hates the question.

“People who died.”

“They’re heroes,” Luke says, low, reverent because Luke worships everything. Han has never met anyone who loves things simply because they exist the way that Luke does. Even Lando was never that open.

Han scrubs a hand through his hair and looks at Luke, at the way the years have aged him faster than they should, the fact that one of his hands is now metal and gears, the fact that so many of his heroes have died, and does an unexpected thing: he reaches a hand out to touch Luke’s cheek, briefly, a ghost touch. “People.” He doesn’t know why the distinction is important to him, but he knows from the trapped, frozen face of the man named Baze Malbus that heroism was not on his mind in those moments. It was just the dismayed, broken realization that the only thing he loved was gone. And Han Solo hates seeing it. Han Solo hates seeing that kind of face on anyone at all. It is why he prefers his ship, space, stars, suns, and moons. Celestial bodies never look at you like you are holding your world inside their palm. They never look at you at all. You can never disappoint them.

People are fragile and full of expectations. Expectations and disappointment when someone does not measure up. 

The raw wound look on Baze Malbus’ face matches the raw wound that Han feels inside his chest sometimes when he stands on the ramp of the Falcon and looks out at the swarms of people in the cargo bay, the crush he feels in his mind when he is in crowded rooms. All those expectations. All those potential failures. The fear of taking the chance of being someone’s lover when you may just hurt them more because of everything you’re not.

“You see it,” Lando saws, a little awed, a little surprised the way he always is when Han eventually gets something.

“I see it,” Han agrees and can’t look at any of them or the holo. Just looks at his hands, his feet, casts his mind out to think of how one gear slots next to another gear in the engine of the Falcon, how one cannot turn without the other. “I get it.” And he does. And it scares him.

Once the constellations are christened, named, unveiled, and announced to the universe, Han avoids piloting the Falcon through them. He cannot be caught in their gaze. He cannot think about that wound face. Too much is on his heart as it is. He cannot understand how to feel any more than he already does, cannot risk the threat of failing to love anyone as hard as those two men obviously loved each other. They are a beacon of hope to some, but they are a reminder to Han that things end, people die, and he cannot fly beneath their gaze without feeling judged. Especially, many, many years after that discussion over their stars, when everything in his own life falls apart, leaving him with only the Falcom and Chewie, years after he had learned how to want so much more.


End file.
